To study the susceptibility of Type 309 stainless steel to stress-corrosion cracking as a weld overlay to line the interior of boiling water reactor pressure vessels, its dependency on the metallurgical factors was examined in a series of creviced bent-beam (CBB) tests for a high-temperature, high-purity water environment. It is shown that whereas carbon as an alloying element promotes the stress-corrosion cracking susceptibility, δ-ferrite works to suppress it. Since the results obtained in this study can be correlated quite nicely to those of sulfuric acid-copper sulfate intergranular corrosion test, moreover, the major metallurgical cause for development of stress-corrosion cracking susceptibility is identified, as for the Type 304 stainless steels, with depletion of chromium occurring in the vicinity of grain boundaries.

Subject
Intergranular stress corrosion cracking, High purity water, Boiling water reactors, Sulfates, Welding, Aqueous environments, Carbon, Stainless steel, Caustic stress corrosion cracking, Grain boundary, Intergranular corrosion, Weld metal, Stress corrosion cracking
Keywords:
stainless steel, weld metal, stress-corrosion cracking, boiling water reactor, sensitization, chromium depletion, δ-ferrite
© 1993 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
1993
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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